The party-planner extraordinaire shares photos from his new book, The Art of the Party and explains how he uses humble materials to create stunning decor

Elevating the Everyday: How David Stark Uses Humble Materials for Stunning Decor

Elevating the Everyday: How David Stark Uses Humble Materials for Stunning Decor

There are two ways to enjoy party planner and designer David Stark's new book, The Art of the Party. You can admire it as a coffee table book full of images from his show-stopping events, or treat it like a handbook for imbuing your own parties with the joie de vivre and excitement Stark's events are know for.

One theme both types of readers will notice throughout is Stark's clever habit of creating glamorous decorations out of humble materials. "I am attracted to everyday materials," he tells us. "But I don't use them as a starting point—instead I'm thinking about what the event is about and what tools are specific to the organization or people throwing it."

Case in point: the paper flower chandlier at a Detroit garden wedding of a couple with a passion for paper artistry. Click through for some of our favorite examples of Stark's inventive uses for materials such as paper, tape, pencils, and more.

Material of Choice: Colored Pencils

Material of Choice: Colored Pencils

"My trajectory working in design and events really started with flowers," Stark tells us. "But somewhere along the way I realized that while flowers are one wonderful tool in the box, they're not the only one. Different events call for different materials."

Here, at a fund-raiser for the American Patrons of the Tate Museum, Stark used colored pencils as the basis of much of the decor. "You can harness the intrinsic beauty of inexpensive materials if you invest time and labor to transform them into an object of beauty," he writes. "Just remember that when you calculate your material costs, you must also budget something for your time."